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Back The Great Pretenders
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise for The Great Pretenders
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. PART I
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. PART II
  14. Chapter Eight
  15. Chapter Nine
  16. Chapter Ten
  17. Chapter Eleven
  18. Chapter Twelve
  19. Chapter Thirteen
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. PART III
  25. Chapter Eighteen
  26. Chapter Nineteen
  27. Chapter Twenty
  28. Chapter Twenty-one
  29. Chapter Twenty-two
  30. Chapter Twenty-three
  31. Chapter Twenty-four
  32. Chapter Twenty-five
  33. Chapter Twenty-six
  34. PART IV
  35. Chapter Twenty-seven
  36. Chapter Twenty-eight
  37. Chapter Twenty-nine
  38. Chapter Thirty
  39. Chapter Thirty-one
  40. Chapter Thirty-two
  41. Chapter Thirty-three
  42. Chapter Thirty-four
  43. Chapter Thirty-five
  44. PART V
  45. Chapter Thirty-six
  46. Chapter Thirty-seven
  47. Chapter Thirty-eight
  48. Chapter Thirty-nine
  49. Chapter Forty
  50. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  51. Readers Guide
  52. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
  53. Acknowledgments
  54. About the Author
  55. What’s next onyour reading list?

The waiters were all temporary help hired for the occasion. Negroes, I noticed. When the kitchen door swung open, I caught a glimpse of Eudonna standing there supervising the waiters and watching over the kitchen staff with a gimlet eye. Why wasn’t Eudonna home with her own family? The question would never have occurred to me before Terrence came into my life. Then I thought of all those Christmas dinners at Summit Drive that Clarence had presided over. He had recovered from his operation in September and was back at work, but today, since Leon, Denise, and Elsie were here, surely he would have Christmas at home with Ruby and little Serena and their other grandchildren and their parents, with Terrence’s sisters and their husbands and children. Maybe Booker was there with his trumpet, and maybe he was in a good mood, and maybe he brought his musician friends from the Comet Club, and maybe they were playing jazzy bebop arrangements of Christmas songs in the living room.

Why is it, I thought, that Clarence and Julia should so closely connect our families, and yet . . . I closed my eyes briefly and tried to imagine all of us at one long, noisy table, Clarence and Ruby and their children and grandchildren, Coralee and her husband and kids, Leon, Denise, Elsie, Irene, Gordon, their kids, Booker and the musicians, Terrence and the Cookes from Alabama, Mr. Branch, the Tobins, me and Jonathan, just celebrating Christmas together connected by the bonds of time, and affection, goodwill and respect. For a moment I could see it all before me, like some ghost of Christmas yet to come, and then Phil touched my elbow and asked me to pass the gravy. Twice.

PART IV

A House Made of Straw

1956

Chapter Twenty-seven

In Southern California, once New Year’s is over, it’s spring. The narcissus pop up, the rains come, and the hills turn a tender, leathery green, and lupines and ice plants dot the headlands and canyons. That January, work settled into a certain amount of ho-hum with no major breakthroughs or excitement, except when Terrence’s letters arrived, or, less pleasantly, the occasional appearance of Popeye. Thelma and I continued our routine precautions like the matchbook in the door, and we cut off all contact with Max and Marian. We all agreed that only in an emergency would we be in touch. How we would get in contact, we didn’t say, and honestly, we didn’t know.